96 3rd brake light out..

[JasonF]

Hey guys,
I have searched on this topic and found a few posts but nothing difinitive. It sounds like most people try to replace the ballast first for about $40 from the junk yard, and if that doesn't fix it, it must be the bulb. Apparently the bulb is very difficult to get out.
Has anyone had luck resurrecting their 3rd brake light on a 95-97?

I don't feel like a LED conversion is over my head. I'm more worried about the rivets I will have to drill out. Can I just replace them with bolts/nuts? I don't own a rivet tool.

Thanks for your help

Jason

 

[JasonF]

Am I the only one who has wanted to fix this problem? I'm sure someone out there has some great ideas.. please help!

Jason

 

[Sallad420]

If or when mine does go, I'm going to make an LED light myself. I plan on going to Radio Shack, buying a bunch of red LED's and start soldering them to make a light bar.

Just an idea. Should be quite cheap and easy to do.

 

[JasonF]

Ok, so I made what I thought was going to be some progress. I went to a U-pull it salvage yard, and sure enough they had one 2ng gen explorer with my center brake light. It had been rear ended and the lower hatch was smashed in. But, the brake light was in tact. I was able to get the Ballast as well as the light assembly from it.

Tonight I hooked up:

-The junker ballast with my center brake light
-The junker ballast with the junker brake light
-My ballast with the junker brake light

No dice on any of the combos.. No light.. nada

Thinking maybe there was a problem with the supply, I confirmed 0V with foot off the brake and 12.1V with foot on the brake at the power connector to the center light.

As far as I know there is no way to test whether the ballast works without destroying your multimeter..so I didn't try.

So what can I confirm from all of this....

I have two bad ballasts OR two bad brake lights I guess. My hunch is with the flourescent tubes being bad, the chances of getting two bad ballasts seems rather rare.

I don't know what to do at this point. I guess a LED conversion would be easiest since I have the junker brake light to play around with. Unfortunately it is sealed and I don't think I can split it in half to remove the bulb. I would probably just have to dremel some slots in the back housing to get in there, or just drill a row of holes for some LEDs. Then shake out the broken pieces of flourescent tube or something. Reading up on LED's, it doesn't sound like they are totally straight forward to install. It sounded like they had to be wired 3 in series with a resistor, and you keep repeating that process. Can anyone offer any suggestions or help?

Thanks

Jason

 

[JasonF]

Finally got around to fixing this. I found a replacement used light online and bought that. I also went to home depot to pick up a rivet tool and rivets. After that it's cake to replace...

-unplug battery
-remove inside hatch trim
-remove ballast
-drill out rivets on third brake light moulding
-remove two plastic nuts on the ends of moulding
-carefully remove moulding, detach wires and washer hose
-carefully separate light from moulding, and replace (mine took some patience to separate)
-replace light and reinstall with new rivets

It works now, it will be interesting to see how long this particular tail light bulb will last.

Jason